"I Am Sitting in A Room" is a psycho-acoustic classic by Alvin Lucier for voice and tape. The phrases describing the action are recorded, then played into a room and re-recorded. And that goes on over and over again.

Collage artist Residuum takes the text by Lucier and let the computer speak it. And as a computer can only speak virtually, the technique is applied to virtual space, i.e. a plugin, that simulates the echoes of real space. Over and over again, 59 times, to be precise. And it ends in Ambient music.

Somehow, there is a problem with archive.org recognizing some of the VBR mp3 and converting them into lo-fi mp3 and ogg vorbis. Unfortunately, Those files are not included in the zip file.

For more music by Residuum visit the website http://www.residuum.org/
More about Alvin Lucier: http://alucier.web.wesleyan.edu/


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Artist/Composer: Residuum
Date: 2005-01-27 00:00:00
Label / Recorded by: Residuum
Keywords: Experimental

Creative Commons license: Sampling Plus

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Reviewer: LAJ - - January 29, 2005
Subject: I am sitting in a room different to the one you are in now.....
Interesting and engaging modern take on Alvin Lucier's 1970 electro-acoustic classic I am sitting in a room. Here a computer reads the text and plugins are used to simulate the acoustics of the room. Over a period of about an hour, a one minute piece of computer read text slowly evolves into beautiful ambience. For those interested in some background and analysis of Lucier'r orginal compostion visit http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~densil/papers/Lucier.pdf#search='i%20am%20sitting%20in%20a%20room' for a downloadable pdf document. A clip of the orginal version is here:

http://www.lovely.com/soundfiles/452951013_1.mp3


Here's the text:

I am sitting in a room different to the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.